#159: The Rolling Stones - Aftermath (1966)

Zack: As much as I love Exile on Main St., Beggar’s Banquet, and Let it Bleed, Aftermath is my favorite Rolling Stones album. Besides for having my single favorite Stones song (Paint it Black, because I’m just so original), it’s just jam-packed with that vintage sound of blues harmonica, hard rock guitar, and sexually-charged lyrics. It is, quite frankly, rock ‘n’ roll. When you picture McCartney and Lennon or the Davies brothers or even Pete Townshend setting out to write songs, the image probably involves some paper and a pencil. Probably an acoustic guitar or something as well. And, depending on the era, maybe a little something extra to boost the creative process. Now picture Mick Jagger and Keith Richards during the songwriting process. If you’re anything like me, you immediately saw scantily-clad women, empty bottles everywhere, and some smashed windows or something. Essentially, you saw what they sing songs about personified into real life. How badass is that? With Aftermath, you get a Stones album so good it could only have followed one hell of a bender. It’s no frills, stripped-to-the-bone music, but damn is it good.

Favorite Tracks: Paint it Black; Under My Thumb; Going Home  

Emily: The Rolling Stones just aren’t a band I’ve explored much on my own, but I’m glad to be able to experience them through the list. After listening to Aftermath, there’s no doubt in my mind as to why the band is legendary. They infuse 60s rock with classic blues, with each track displaying different levels of each. Paint It Black, the best-known song of the album (which was surprisingly not included on the original release), leans more towards the rock end with its driving guitar (and sitar) riff. Most of the other tracks, however, are more straightforward blues with a bit of psychedelia. The balance between rock and blues was most apparent to me in the 11-minute-long closing track, Goin’ Home. Usually songs that break the 6-minute mark tend to drag on forever, either repeating the same notes over and over or venturing into crazy jam territory. Goin’ Home does neither of those, which I think is why I enjoyed it so much. The blues influence is clear, but it’s classic rock through and through. Without being repetitive or venturing too far from the core sound and story of the song, Goin’ Home is just 11 minutes of great music – a fitting conclusion to a great album.

Favorite Tracks: Paint It, Black; Goin’ Home; Think

Matt Brune: This album sums up the early Stones quite nicely. This is the first album to be made entirely of songs written by the Jagger/Richards partnership. This song was also the first to be recorded completely in the States. It featured the late and ever so brilliant Brian Jones on a variety of instruments, including marimbas and sitar. There are different UK and US versions of the album, which was common practice for British bands in the 1960s. The UK version had Mother’s Little Helper on it, which is by far one of my favorite Stones songs. The US version had Paint It, Black, another amazing classic. Songs of merit on both versions include Stupid Girl, Under My Thumb, and It’s Not Easy.

Favorite Tracks: Mother’s Little Helper; Paint it Black; Under My Thumb

#158: The Beatles - Revolver (1966)

Zack: The Beatles have obtained a level of cultural significance that permeates into any and all segments of society. Don’t believe me? Look to Kanye’s MBDTF, when he asks, “What’s a black Beatle anyway? A fuckin’ roach?” Or when LeBron compared the way the Miami Heat were selling out stadiums to the Beatles, prompting the great Heatles nickname (which I still endorse, by the way). Or when Jay-Z comments that, legacy-wise, he is “on the Beatles’ ass.” There are a few points from this. First and foremost is that I know a lot about hip-hop and basketball and will look for any opportunity to bring those topics up. But the main one is that the Beatles are so widely known that every member of our society is at least familiar enough with them to make some passing reference to their legacy. Who else can claim that? Off the top of my head I would say Elvis, Frank Sinatra, and Michael Jackson. You could make a case for Bob Dylan or the Rolling Stones, but I don’t think it’s as persuasive. And if you questioned these same people, who are all at least moderately familiar with the Beatles, do you know how often Revolver would be mentioned? Seriously, do you? My guess is not nearly as often as it should. Revolver routinely trades spots with Sgt. Pepper’s as the greatest album of all time on most critic publications, but doesn’t have anywhere near the same level of name recognition. I think. Once again, and I cannot stress this enough, I have done exactly zero research on this because I’m too lazy. Which is crazy to me, since I think Revolver is the Beatles best album. It’s just a better representation of what the Beatles were all about. It takes their traditional pop-rock sound but also blends in their obsession with innovation, this time in the form of Indian instrumentation. Plus, it has Eleanor Rigby, which is a huge advantage. Basically, Revolver is the Beatles at their absolute best, a lofty peak that few others can compare to.

Favorite Tracks: Eleanor Rigby; Glad tot Get You Into My Life; And Your Bird Can Sing

Emily: What an apropos time to be returning to this album! Just a few weeks ago, Mad Men (one of Zack’s and my favorite shows) used Tomorrow Never Knows as the ending coda of an episode. Don plays this last track from Revolver after his young wife tells him to open his mind to the equally young Beatles, but cuts it off halfway through. Now that I’ve listened to the track (and all of Revolver) fully, I see the genius in Matt Weiner’s choice of the song for this season of Mad Men. You see, both Revolver and this season Mad Men depict their subjects in a state of transition – not surprising in 1966. Don, Roger, Pete, Peggy, and the other members of SCDP are facing numerous personal and professional challenges to their status quo. The Beatles, on the other hand, challenged their own status quo on Revolver. There are hints of their earlier pop/rock and roll sound, but it also foreshadows the radical reimagining of sound and image that came next with Sgt. Pepper. Love You To highlights George Harrison’s growing interest in India, Eleanor Rigby uses shimmery strings (unusual for any pop or rock song, let alone in 1966), Got to Get You into My Life has some R&B and soul going on…I could do this for every track; they all sound unique, looking both back and forward in the Beatles’ history. As the closing track, Tomorrow Never Knows gives a great hint to the future with its psychedelic, somewhat experimental arrangement. Transitionary albums aren’t often a band’s best work; they’re trying to work out the kinks of a new sound that can still sound rough or confused. However, much like the current transitionary season of Mad Men, Revolver is one of the Beatles’ finest, most eclectic efforts.

Favorite Tracks: Eleanor Rigby; Tomorrow Never Knows; Got to Get You into My Life

Matt Brune: A band that revolutionized music and culture in the United Kingdom, the United States, and so many other countries. They hardly need an introduction, as remnants of Beatlemania still exist today, nearly 40 years after they disbanded. Here is Revolver, the Beatle’s 7th album, released in 1966. The album shows a change for the Beatles, a movement away from the rest of the British Invasion and into the psychedelic sounds of the 60s. Two of the Beatles’ most famous songs, Eleanor Rigby and Yellow Submarine, are both on this album. Personal favorites from this album include Eleanor Rigby, I’m Only Sleeping, as well as And Your Bird Can Sing. If you are looking for a Beatles record that is not Abbey Road, The White Album, or Sgt Pepper’s, than this is your album, post-Mod Beatles.

Favorite Tracks: Eleanor Rigby; And Your Bird Can Sing; For No One

#157: The Kinks - Something Else by the Kinks (1967)

We would like to start by apologizing for the long pause since that intro post. Unfortunately, one of our guest bloggers has run into some technical difficulties in getting us his posts. This has caused a bit of a logjam effect, so we've decided to post what we have now and retroactively go back and add his once we have them. So, without further ado, The Kinks!

Emily: I’ll admit, I was a bit skeptical when Zack wanted to include The Kinks on this pantheon of classic rock. It’s not a name you hear very often compared with the epic likes of the Beatles, Stones, and Who, and I had very minimal exposure to the band beyond You Really Got Me and the other album we listened to by them. However, I trusted his musical judgment and agreed to add Something Else into this experiment of classic rock classification. Though I still don’t think the Kinks are quite as on par with the other three bands, I can see (rather, hear) the important influence they had. Some songs on the album have an ethereal, lilting, dreamy quality to them that doesn’t sound very rock but definitely sounds very ‘60s. Most of the second half of the album, however, is essentially proto-garage rock. It was a unique, almost revolutionary sound for the time and influenced one of the most large and important sub-genres of rock music. Now, that accomplishment is worthy of this musical pantheon.

Favorite Tracks: Afternoon Tea; Love Me Till the Sun Shines; Two Sisters

Matt Brune: The Kinks are the quintessential mod band of 1960s London. Though The Kinks would have limited success after the mid-60s, they would remain a fulltime band until 1996, longer than The Who, The Rolling Stones, and The Beatles. But, back to 1966: This album has some precious gems amongst it. No Kinks fan could possibly overlook that beauty that is Waterloo Sunset. It is hard for me to pick favorites, as there are no bad songs on this album. It had a brilliant balance of songs that were reminiscent of the initial phases of the British Invasion, as well as the psychedelic tunes that were brewing and would eventually run out the mods. Two Sisters, Situation Vacant, and Waterloo Sunset were, in my opinion, the best tracks, but that is subject to change next I listen to this album.

Favorite Tracks: Waterloo Sunset; Two Sisters; Situation Vacant


Zack: From discussing my Mount Rushmore theory with other human beings, I have concluded that the most controversial of the four is easily the Kinks. It’s certainly understandable. As influential as the Kinks were/are, they’re being compared to the freaking Beatles, Rolling Stones, and Who. Obviously, part of the reason I included them is my previously discussed bias. If you’re too lazy to click the link, then I’ll just say that my dad is a HUGE Kinks/Ray Davies fan and I’ve been listening via osmosis for years. But even I have to admit that the Kinks sort of lack that clearly-identifiable trait that makes them stick out. The Beatles are pop-rock. The Stones are blues-rock. The Who are practically protopunk. The Kinks are…the most likely to write a song called Afternoon Tea? The most difficult to pigeonhole? All four of these bands change their sound to some degree as they progressed, but the Kinks make one of the bigger jumps. It’s easy to forget that they first burst onto the scene with the hard rock classic “You Really Got Me.” Years later, they were writing silly acoustic ditties about trannies. They, of course, had a psychedelic phase as well. If you had to give them a sub-sub-genre, I guess it would be pop-rock, but that seems to only cover about half their repertoire. After much thought, I’ve decided that their claim to fame is that they are the most conceptually sound. Not an easy task when you consider that they’re up against the band that made Tommy and the overall brilliance of the Beatles. But it’s definitely true. The Kinks simply do not make albums as songs; they make them as storybooks. While they definitely got better at it as time progressed, it’s just as true for Something Else, one of their earlier works. Maybe the subject material isn’t as united as you’d expect, but the tone of each song works to reflect a certain mood on the listener. Furthermore, they use the album as a palette to express their unique blend of hard rock, psychedelic, and pop brand. The execution on this technique is near flawless, making it a great example of the Kinks sound, both to someone whose dad has been pumping it into his brain from the time he was young and someone who has never checked them out before.
Favorite Tracks: Waterloo Sunset; Death of a Clown; Afternoon Tea

The Re-returning

Whoopsie daisy. So I guess it’s been over four months since we last posted. Time sure does fly when you’re trying to cope with one monster of a semester. We usually suck around finals, but a whole semester is pretty unacceptable.

But since there’s nothing we can do about it, it’s time to just accept it and try and move on. So we’re going to try and really kick ass this summer to make up some ground. First up is the idea we left off on.

Zack: Ranking things is fun. There seems to be an innate human desire to make top-ten’s and other such lists. No one is guiltier of fetishizing this base human instinct than us. Alright, maybe fetishizing wasn’t the optimal word there, but you get the idea. Anyway, one of my favorite things to do is the “Mount Rushmore” approach. Basically, you assume that they’re going to be building a Mount Rushmore of something and you need to select the four people to be represented.

Here’s an example: NBA centers. For me, it’s Wilt, Kareem, Bill Russell, and Shaq. Notice how there isn’t an honorary mentions section. There can’t be. The Mount Rushmore model forces you to set a hard cap at four and you can’t break it. There has to be a very thick line drawn. I’m not allowed to say “well Moses, Duncan, and Olajuwon were all like PF/C so they have to be considered.” Nope. It’s just Wilt, Kareem, Russell, and Shaq.

This is actually even harder than you’d imagine. The Mount Rushmore model also carries with it a sense of immortality. You can’t pick two people who had very similar games/legacies/whatever because what if history judges one to be a lite version of the other. The four need to be at least minimally different so that, if someone gazing upon the majestic stone monument years down the road doesn’t agree with one of the choices, at least they can say, “but he was the most [insert adjective].”

Getting back to music, I like to apply the Mount Rushmore model to the great classic rock bands. My four is The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Who, and The Kinks. I can safely say that, having talked about this with quite a few people, I don’t think I’ve ever encountered a single person who agrees with me. But if they want to express their own opinions, they can go start their own blogs. So here’s what we’re going to do; we’re going to review an album by each band. And by “we,” I don’t mean just Emily and me. We’ve brought in two guest bloggers for this. Emily’s close childhood friend, Matt Brune, and my ex-coworker and friend (making an encore, no less), Matt Henry. All four of us will write reviews for each album, rank the four bands based on those albums, and write a synopsis of why/how they came to that decision. And who knows. If there’s a clear consensus, maybe I could be convinced to change my Mount Rushmore bands. Haha, just kidding.

#156: Tito Puente - Dance Mania (1958)

Emily: Even though most people probably have no idea who Tito Puente is, he’s pretty important in the realm of Latin music. Anyone who is dubbed both “El Rey de los Timbales” and “The King of Latin Music” clearly has done something to elevate him to the top of the genre. He was an accomplished band leader and musician who brought dozens of Latin jazz, mambo, and salsa albums to mainstream listeners, and Dance Mania was one of the first of those efforts. Each song combines those genres into high-energy, danceable music that made me wish I had taken more than one salsa lesson from high school Spanish Club. Although the tracks tended to be indistinguishable from each other, each one kept up the same enthusiastic Latin sound. This would work well as background music for a Mexican meal, or, better yet, the backup music for some margarita-fueled impromptu salsa dancing.

Favorite Tracks: Varsity Drag; 3-D Mambo; Mambo Gozon

Zack: You may remember a few weeks ago when I listened to Sinead O’Connor while making a beef stew. I thought that it was good cooking music, but I’ve come to the conclusion that it was really good stew cooking music. Something about cutting potatoes while listening to that fair Irish lass was just so perfect. So, what did I find myself cooking while listening to Tito Puente? Why, chili of course. I swear I didn’t intend that to happen. It was just the next album on the list and I’d been meaning to make a batch of chili for weeks but just got the ingredient I kept forgetting yesterday. Still, it is undeniable that it worked. I was salsa dancing over to cut onions and everything. This album would be a lot of fun regardless of coinciding activity, but cooking chili was just so appropriate. Now I just need to find something to listen to while making stir fry…

Favorite Tracks: Complicación; Cuando Te Vea; Varsity Drag

#155: Beck - Odelay (1996)

Zack: In the wise words of one Bender Bending Rodriguez, Beck is “a musician/poet who transcends genres even as he reinvents them.” You really can’t sum it up any better than that. For those of you who haven’t picked up on the multiple hints I’ve left so far throughout this blog, Futurama is a wonderful show and I especially recommend Bendin’ in the Wind as a particularly good episode. It evens provides a great breakdown of this album is particular:

Beck: “You know, when I'm upset, I write a song about it. Like when I wrote Devil's Haircut, I was feeling really... what's that song about?”

Bender: “Hey, yeah! I could write a song! With real words, not phony ones like 'odelay.'”

Beck: “'Odelay' is a word! Just look it up in the Becktionary!”

Zing! Odelay was a really fun album. I’d listened to a few other Beck works prior and was really disappointed that Guero, Modern Guilt, and Mellow Gold had all been left off. I can’t speak for Sea Change, but I’m totally okay with Odelay replacing those others. It really showcases Beck’s signature ability to avoid being pidgeonholed. Oh, you think I’m just some indie/folk artist? Boom! I just mixed a little hip-hop in. What’re you gonna do about it? My one critique would be that it didn’t finish strong. It leads off with a solid mixture of singles and just generally great tracks, but it really winds down with a few mehs at the end. I think a simple track reshuffling would have made it even better. Perhaps starting the same way but ending with Where it’s At, Readymade, High 5 (Rock the Catskills), Jack-Ass in that order? Other than that tiny little hiccup, though, Odelay was a modern masterpiece.

Favorite Tracks: Jack-Ass; Devil’s Haircut; Where it’s At

Emily: First of all, I have to say that I absolutely love the cover of this album. I want one of those dogs to run around my house being cute and mopping the floors as he goes. Anyway, Beck is an interesting artist. He’s never content to stick with one successful sound, instead eschewing the rules of popular music to constantly change and evolve his music. He’d rather gamble with something innovative and cool than sticking with a top-selling strategy from a previous train of thought. Odelay is probably the first of Beck’s albums to demonstrate this mentality. He was riding high off the success of the slacker anthem Loser, but instead of sticking with the drawling slackerdom of the hit single Beck added different influences and sounds to the follow-up to his fun wordplay and sometimes nonsensical lyrics. The result is a creative album that is truly alternative, drawing on a wide variety of genres (folk, grunge, jazz, and hip-hop, among others) but not sounding like any one in particular. In fact, it doesn’t necessarily even sound like Beck up to that point, but his near-constant reinvention is where the artistry lies.

Favorite Tracks: The New Pollution; Devils Haircut; Where It’s At 

#154: Dolly Parton - Coat of Many Colors (1971)

Zack: There are a lot of albums that I’ve listened to that just seem to drag on forever. This is not one of them. Partly, that is because the songs are so simple, yet graciously performed by what can only be described as one of the most underappreciated musicians of the past 50 years that they just seem to fly by. It’s also partly because this album is less than 28 minutes long. I mean, hot damn! Why can’t some more of our albums been that short. I’m looking at, Captain Beefheart. Also that 99 song album that we’re going to have to listen to some point down the road which I am not looking forward to that at all. Coat of Many Colors gives you all those wacky subgenres of country in one shot. It’s got your country-pop, ballad country, country-rock, etc. Could have used a little bit more cowpunk but I’ll let it go this one time. When she drifts over more towards the country-rock or country-pop, I felt more engaged. That’s probably more due to personal preferences though. The signature and title track of this album doubles as both the opener and high-point. After doing a little bit or research, I determined that the three worst songs on the album just so happened to be the ones not written by Dolly as well. What I’m trying to say is that you suck, Porter Wagoner. Ultimately, the conclusion this album left me with is that there are some legitimately talented country musicians out there. They’re just all old and decrepit now. But if country music started to feature less ridiculous b2a (boot-to-ass) based songs and more of the Dolly Parton, Willie Nelson, and Johnny Cash kind of stuff I’ve been lucky enough to listen to up to this point, I may start to become a country music fan.

Favorite Tracks: Coat of Many Colors; Here I Am; Early Morning Breeze

Emily: Aside from twang and being generally disliked in major metropolitan areas, country music is known for its intensely personal songwriting. Oftentimes the stories tend to blend together into a lot of variations on “woe is me I can’t find love in this gosh darn town.” Dolly Parton’s Coat of Many Colors, however, breaks that mold. For non-country fans Dolly is best known for her over-the-top personality and shameless love of surgical enhancements, but she really is one hell of a storyteller. This album, which Parton wrote almost entirely on her own, tells her story of growing up poor with heartfelt honesty and emotion. While I wasn’t always a fan of the music behind the lyrics (as I expected), I was completely drawn in by the story.

Favorite Tracks: Traveling Man; Coat of Many Colors; Early Morning Breeze